Songs For The End Of It
by AleTheHOUSEwife
Summary: COLLECTION - Series ending scenarios for House, MD. House/Cuddy/Wilson mostly.
1. For Blue Skies

**For Blue Skies**

_It's been a long year_

_Since we last spoke_

_How's your halo?_

_Just between you and I_

_You and me and the satellites._

_–_

_I never believed you. I only wanted to... Before all this, what did I miss? _

Cuddy could feel it growing inside. Boiling up inexorably, warming her stomach, her hands, her cheeks. It was there, it had never really gone away. Thinking of House's broken promises, the voices inside her head got louder. And the louder they got, the clearer the message: she had just never believed he would change for her. She had clenched her fists around that impalpable hope, and had ended up grasping empty air: she had wanted those promises to be true, and lasting... She just could not accept he could relapse. What did she miss? She did not know. She knew what she had hidden from herself, though, and that was her own bias: she was too desperate to see him finally succeed. She was too desperate to finally get him. To protect him, to nourish his soul with good and hope. She probably didn't even want to change him, not consciously. She just wanted to help him find peace.

_Do you ever get homesick?_

She did. She missed every inch of her old house, and the smell of her office, and Wilson, and the noisy leaking faucet in her kitchen. She even missed paperwork, and everyone paging her, and her name on the door to her office at the first floor of the hospital. She missed the feeling of responsibility, the endless challenges. She missed the way people looked at her walking in every morning. She missed their respect as well as the gossip that inevitably snuck its way to her. She was so _damn_ homesick.

_I can't get used to it. I'll never get used to it._

_I'm under that night_

_I'm under those same stars_

_We're in a red car_

_You asleep at my side_

_Going in and out of the headlights._

Her child asleep in the seat, and the car moving smoothly underneath the starry, dark sky of New Jersey. Orange street lamps and intermitting neon signs, and an empty road ahead. No one would have driven anywhere on such an icy night, at that impossible hour. Yet, Cuddy couldn't help but be hypnotized by the bright colors cracking the dark open. Those same lights had pierced her stare right through, the night she had rushed House to the hospital, in that same car, with Rachel at her side. That night, he had put his whole self in her hands, with the whole load of mistakes and wrong decisions that had come from that. But she hadn't betrayed him: once more he had asked her to stop the surgeons in case they decided to amputate his leg, and once more she had agreed. Once more, she had had the chance to put an end to his provoked, self-chosen pain. And once more she had given in to the hope he would be right in begging her otherwise. Inevitably, House had been proved wrong. Once more.

_Could I have saved you? Would that've betrayed you?_

She could have. She would have. And yet she hadn't, and he had just gone too far to be saved again. Tears pricking her eyes from the inside, Cuddy strangled the steering wheel. She had been so angry at him. So unforgiving. She had felt the load of the years crushing her ribs, and at one point she had found out she wasn't willing to hold out her heart to him anymore. She had left one year and a half earlier.

_I wanna burn this film_

_You alone with those pills._

But the force hauling her was too inexorable to be contrasted. It was like magnetic attraction, with the novelty of a more earthly consciousness that she couldn't hope for anything, or change anything, or demand anything. She needed to love him despite she would have to be the stronger one. That's what she was: all the rest was fiction, wishful thinking inevitably leading to failure. She had experienced choosing herself over his many flaws, but that hadn't paid off. She had ended up lonelier: if she had previously been angry at House, or disappointed in him, she had also tasted the mellow flavor of having an exceptional human being at her side. One who had surprised her, one who undoubtedly and desperately and unfortunately loved her too much to ever accept his own being incapable of a real change. One who did not believe in change, but had given up his genius for her, on purpose. To show her he _was_ there. One who had given up his success in happiness because he would not be able to see her die. That had been wrong, and fake, and unfair on both sides.

Maybe, it was time to _not_ change. Maybe, it was time for wrong, and regression, and turning back from life-changing decisions, and maturity. But then, how hard would it be to tell him she would have been there for him _if_ he ever wanted to learn how to be at her side? And again, how real and heartfelt his clumsy attempts at being there for her had been? House was easy to relapse back into his demons, if no one held his hand throughout life: that was her addiction, the only thing that made her genuinely satisfied with herself. Not settling for less or for easier. Not moving out her house, leaving her job, never calling back her old friends. Going back to House was wrong, and unfair to herself. She would have walked in and told him all that, and then she would have left again, forever. Or not? One side of her was eager to let it out eventually, to get closure. The other side, though, was desperate for contact: one glance, one touch of his cotton-clad sleeve, one _kiss_. And then he would have said something to her, and she would have suffered again from how wrong he was for her.

–

It was early in the morning when she pulled over and parked her car in front of the hospital. She realized House couldn't possibly be there yet. Rachel was still asleep, lost in her dreamwork. Cuddy picked her up from the car seat and covered her up in a blanket, holding the little girl's head close to her shoulder with her palm spread open on her silky hair. As in a weird dream in which she hadn't got any control of her own body, her feet moved to the entrance.

She walked in.

Wilson was the first to spot her.

It had probably been the glance he had flashed at her. Or maybe the people in the hallway going silent, and Brenda dropping her files onto the counter to come to her, hands entwined. Or maybe it had been her sixth sense when it came to House.

But she had understood it instantly.

–

Cuddy cracked the door open and walked in slowly.

It was huge, and... noticeable. It dominated her view, it obnubilated her senses. She approached his bedside and bent over, breathing as silently as she could, trying to control her emotions. In no time, he blinked awake.

House's eyes in hers, again. His hand sought hers, but she pulled away, biting her lower lip. A mixture of hope, fear, surprise was floating in his ocean blue irises. It was that kind of stare you get from a guilty child, or from a homeless soul in search for a shelter. Cuddy hardly heard her own voice, while she was processing the latest events.

"What have you done."

"I'm fine."

"_What have you_..."

"What I should have done ages ago."

"House..."

"I'm _so_ very sorry."

She shook her head, slowly releasing the tears which rolled down her cheeks and down to the shy hand he lifted up to finally touch her. This time, she placed her palm over his and held it close to her temple.

_What you couldn't do I will_

_I forgive you _

_I'll forgive you_

_I'll forgive you_

_I forgive you_

_For blue, blue skies_

_I'll forgive you._

Their smiles met halfway. With her free hand, Cuddy slid down House's right shoulder, and chest, and hip: she stopped there, trying to realize the utter gravity of what was missing. House closed his eyes for a moment, and then raised his own misty stare up to the ceiling, before meeting her gaze on the way down to real life and the bandages covering up his hip stump and the intact bedsheets shining in the sun where his right leg had once been. The void was palpable, and it came from inside them both: space had been freed, for forgiveness and love and being at peace.

Nothing else remained to be done: it was time for acceptance.


	2. Angels On The Moon

**Angels On The Moon**

_Do you dream, that the world will know your name  
><em>_S__o tell me your name.  
>D<em>_o you care, about all the little things or anything at all?_

He watched the light of day sneaking in and out his room everyday. Silent, guarded, the light walked the floor of his room in padded feet. It would dance around, caress the nightstand, the bedsheets, the walls. It would color it all up every morning: pink, orange, golden glares fighting for a square inch of space. Strangely, he wasn't even remotely scared of what was going to happen. He had felt it coming from the first moment on.

_I wanna feel, all the chemicals inside, I wanna feel.  
>I <em>_want a sunburn, just to know that I'm alive.  
><em>_To know I'm alive._

And he was alive indeed. He was alive in every drop of blood, nerve cell, eye blink. Everything was amplified to make up for the small space he was confined in. His inner space was getting larger and larger every second he spent with himself in the quietness of that room. Maybe it was because giving up his earthly habits would have been easier for him, with an entire _soul_to explore, to hold on to.

_Do you believe, in the day that you were born  
><em>_Tell me do you believe?_

He had experienced love in all his might: he had been sick of it, nauseated by the smell of it because that was something he hadn't been _assembled_ to carry. He had loved two women in his life: one he had pushed away, one had pushed him away. But in all that, he had loved with all his heart, even when his moves had been the wrongest possible. He'd had one friend, and he had held on to that friendship like a life vest.  
>He'd had his skin scratched, his bones cracked, his blood shed. He'd had his fingers on someone else's skin, his lips on someone else's lips. He'd had his eyes bruised, and his heart wounded.<p>

_Don't tell me if I'm dying, cause I don't wanna know  
><em>_If I can't see the sun, then maybe I should go  
><em>_Don't wake me cause I'm dreaming, of angels on the moon  
><em>_Where everyone you know, never leaves too soon._

He'd had people's lives on his shoulders, and never had he unburdened himself from that load. What for, he had never known, but he had been tied to the idea of life in a knot he had gone lengths not to break. Someone had sensed that, rarely. Most of the time, though, he had been the one hidden in the dark, the _deus ex machina_, the master of puppets. All to serve a purpose which he did not even know of.

When Wilson came in to check on his friend, House was long gone. Without his cane, without his misery, without the pain. With a smile, and a quiet sigh heaved while no one could have been listening.

_This is to one last day in the shadows  
><em>_And to know a brother's love  
><em>_This is to New York City angels  
><em>_And the rivers of our blood  
><em>_This is to all of us, to all of us._


	3. Still Water

Based off the 7x16 ending scene and an inspiring chat with Housedailydose about the Sherlock BBC s2 finale. This is how a Sherlock Holmes-based ending might actually be, and since the similarity between the two characters has been a major plot point throughout the whole series, I'm scared it might really happen.

* * *

><p><strong>Still water<strong>

_The water is warm until you discover how deep..._

* * *

><p>The surface of the water got crispy and then flat. For a sequence of endless seconds, everyone stood motionless and silent, waiting for it to break apart again. It was a starry, warm night. The scene was lit by the distant glares coming from the bar. Someone got on their knees; bottles of beer were gently, almost shyly put down on the ground. Someone took a step toward the edge of the pool, leaned forward undecidedly, as if to make certain it had really happened. Someone just kept flashing glances around, the unanswered question floating midair between their eyes and the eyes of whoever caught their glance each time.<p>

But the water was still.

In their ears, the sound of the blue liquid veil being ripped, its edges torn apart.

_The water was still._

The only man who knew what had just happened stood still. His eyes fixed to the sky which the fallen, exhausted star had come from, in a weary flight down. Then, slowly, his stare shifted down to the water hiding its precious prisoner.

_The water was still._

–

It had been a splendid downfall. Inexorable as only it could be and for that retaining a special, poetic yet horrendous feeling of awe. He could not help but admire the greatness of it all, the exit music he had played for himself. It had been painfully perfect, and hedonistic enough for him to feel it was appropriate to his character to sing his way out like that. It was fitting as a swan song: they were all standing up to watch him go, all eyes on him, no one even daring to stop him because it was too enchanting a scene to be tampered with, like it was earthly business.

And that, that was her final punishment, the only part of her memories of him which she would never be able to erase: for she wasn't there, she would be forever bound to the images her mind would create to compensate for what her eyes hadn't witnessed. The scene would have haunted her as much as her guilt – what a maleficent yet sweet thought was that.

What you don't see is what hurts you the most. What you see, you can erase. Perhaps a bit of therapy and wishful thinking would have wiped it off her dreams. All in all, people forget worse than that, don't they? But this time he hadn't gifted her of yet another glimpse of his pain. Depriving her of the mere possibility to change her mind again and save him once more would have been his last gift to her.

–

She was his problem, and that was just the answer to everything. When the phone rang, the guilty angel of many sleepless nights distractedly reached out a hand to pick up the receiver from the coffee table. She was too tired, to weary and hopeless inside, to even think she could sit up. She just wanted to lie in the dark and clear her heart of all the memories, preventing it from being flooded by the great wave of sweetness carrying the thought of the lost lover.

–

The loyal friend got chilly all of a sudden, as if the starry summer night had inexplicably turned wintry. Everyone around was silent, but they were all walking up to the edge of the pool, bringing hands to their mouths, or either holding cellphones without being sure what to do with them.

His voice was still echoing the cry he had let out. As if _that_ could have stopped that fall.

Truth was, the water was still.

–

That was peaceful. He was grateful no one _outside_ was screaming or crying. It was just the best farewell he could wish for: slow, painful, theatrical in its own cruel way. Now they would have known what it all meant to him. That it meant so much to him. So much that he could _kill himself_ over it. So much that he was about to prove her wrong and possibly turn her whole take on him upside down: he cared. He cared enough to be empty without it. The pleasure of her not being able to enjoy the newfound knowledge that he was human after all was so sickening and yet so glorious: he wouldn't have been there for her to enjoy as the person she had always wanted him to be. Her perfect, damaged, passionate hero.

His lungs began to hurt. A lot. He was making a point of honor to himself of keeping his eyes open through it all, but his vision was blurred now. He could see distant shadows dancing beyond the veil of the waters, which he had trespassed like a forbidden portal to his final dissolution into the elements of nature. There was no point in staying, hence he should go.

And then, something broke the charm.

House's whole convoluted, drug ridden sequence of poisoned thoughts dissolved into the same water he had thought would preserve it. What if that was another mistake, the final one? He screwed his eyes closed as one, single element of fear invaded him like plague an undefended body: it wasn't about dying. It wasn't about not feeling anymore.

It was something that he knew had been in his hands several times in his life, but never with this intensity: he had always let it go before it could explode in a myriad consequences. It was a game-changing realization: if there was _one_ thing that could keep him from destructing every single piece of good he had ever done, if he had done any, was the thought of the fallout on _them_.

For the first time, that knowledge didn't escape his hold. How many other times had he just given in to his weakness, causing them devastation and pain? How many times had he tested the limits to their endurance of him?

What if his way of mistreating himself was just as painful for them?

House had known love. He was well aware of how unjustified and insane it could get. Still, it was the nearest he had gotten to be human. Of all things, there was a split second in which he realized he wasn't a monster, and that was when his splendid vendetta got drained of all its gusto. What was vendetta? Was it an extreme form of self appreciation? Was it to demonstrate he had won to himself their pain of a lifetime, without even being there to savor it? Was it so gratuitous on his behalf that he was condemning them to become like him and then be left to their destiny?

Of the many destructive plans House had often laid out, this wasn't even classifiable. It was just maleficent and cruel, and most of all it was making him feel like he deserved to burn his life out in an eternal hell, for the mere thought of getting paid back for his sufferance by causing indelible damage to the only two people who had always been there for him.

_Of all things, House wasn't evil._ He wasn't even close.

He was just damaged, and maybe had a distorted vision of how things should be in the world. But he could never purposely cause that much inexorable pain. Most of the time, in fact, he had realized too late that he had made her suffer. Or Wilson. That was his flaw in life. That was everyone's flaw. Cuddy's flaw in leaving him to despair.

People think they're right, and sometimes they're not. So who was he to administer such a punishment to the one person who had kissed his scar? Who was he to let his best friend's eyes watch him drown?

Too bad it was too late to go back. House just _had_ to breathe.

–

He woke up in the hospital. No one was at his side.

"Hey?" His voice sounded throaty. No one came. House lay back, stare fixed into the neon lights above him. So they had realized he was the evil master of puppets. Eventually. That sent a twinge of pain to his stomach. But it was for the best, all of it. He was alive because he could not carry out his plan in the end, having realized cruelty wasn't like him, that he could not bear the thought that his friends would get forever hurt by his spectacular swansong. He had taken a breath when his brain had forced him to, exactly when he had realized he couldn't die that way. Like an evil, sarcastic oxymoron, he had had to breathe his way to an underwater death when he had realized he wanted to live. For them at least. To preserve their inner beauty, their faith in life's good.

He did not care about his name being cleared. He needed to get away from the people he loved, because he was a curse to them: a curse which they did not want to break because they loved the carrier. It could be that it was the time for him to take his cross on his own shoulders and free them from their self inflicted punishment. Loving him was a life sentence. The fact that he had survived was a sign that he could still take some sort of action.

The would suffer, knowing he'd be somewhere unreachable. But one day, they would have woken up healed.

His cellphone was on the nightstand. House raised a half-hearted smile at the thought that Wilson must have gotten it back from the hotel room, left it there for him to use in case he wanted them back. Just a friendly reminder of a last possibility. House reached out his right hand and grabbed the phone. Without sitting up, he dialed a number.

"Chase?"

–

Chase. The only member of his team who had always had some incredibly scary insight on him. He turned up fifteen minutes later, in his white lab coat. As any other day.

"What the hell, House. That was such a bad idea."

"I..." House cleared his throat. "I know."

"Yeah."

Chase sat down beside him.

"We had to resuscitate you. Wilson was out of his mind. Cuddy..." He quit talking.

"Tell me."

"...Cuddy was here with him all night. They left early this morning."

House nodded.

"House, look..." Chase's voice softened. "I think you should tell them. I mean... what went through your mind. Be honest."

"I know."

"Shall I call them?"

"No."

"House..."

"Have you got a piece of paper?"

Chase knew instantly. Before leaving, he turned to House one last time and flashed him a smile. His eyes, though, were misty.

Two hours later, he called Wilson, as he had been told to.

Of course, House had requested his body to be immediately taken care of.

–

_I'm sorry. Thought I should kill myself because life is just an unworthy mess. Turns out I don't want you two to be haunted by my ghost forever. I can't imagine how annoying I must be as an ectoplasm. You've had enough of me alive, I guess. Please, don't consider this as a suicide. I was an idiot to think I could really do that. I'm so sorry it was too late when I had to breathe. Got my lungs screwed up, and there's nothing I can do now._

_I love you, Cuddy. And you, Wilson. Not the same way, of course. _

_Just... don't miss me. Okay, that is not happening. I hope it ends soon. It will, whatever you think now: people forget. _

_I'm sorry I was about to punish you that way. You don't deserve any of that. Thank you for being my best friends. _

–

House's empty coffin rested under the wet soil of the graveyard. He watched his friends standing together in front of his gravestone, holding his note with shaky hands. Then, he leaned against the trunk of the oak-tree projecting its shadows onto the green, wavy grass. He stood there until they were gone. Then, he set off into the sunlight, trying to allow himself to miss them.

_Maybe, we'll meet again one day._


	4. To Myself

**Eis Eautòn - To Myself**

* * *

><p><em>I have waited <em>  
><em>Dined on ashes <em>  
><em>Swung from chandeliers and climbed Everest <em>  
><em>And none of it's got me close to this<em>

_–_

It was about time something changed in my life. I've never believed in change, never really thought people could die different from how they were born. But I was denying to myself that I have gone through the very same process I was trying to prove non existent. My handicap changed me, for instance. Waking up one day, not being able to stand up without the help of a merciful bed footer, or the arms of a friend, made me different. It made me bitter, that is for sure. It also made me an addict, but I'm not certain that I pop pills just because of the giant hole deforming my right thigh into a useless, shapeless knot of flesh and dead muscle. There's something more to it.

I was never easy to deal with. I've been a complicate child since day one, and not because I liked to be one. I am what I am and there's no changing that: one thing that I still find it hard to deal with is the reason why. Was it my abusive father? I'm tempted to say yes. But there is a gap between my memories and the true facts, between narrative and chronicle. I did not make up anything, you can be sure of that. But I'm still asking myself whether or not there were emotional patches put there by the child I was, to make things look more dramatic, hence feeding my need to just feel something. Was it me trying to create a monster out of a man who was just never satisfied with anything? Was I trying to convince myself he was damaging me when in fact he had foreseen the danger of unleashing my personality? I'll never know for sure. I remember suffering, and that makes for an abusive parent, no matter how you can articulate on that when you are a screwed up adult. I experienced my father's love, but it was love just in his eyes, or in the eyes of those who would bring up a child the way he did with me. The rest, all the rest, that is the fruit of what happened to me later on.

I guess it was just waiting to surface. I wasn't born equipped for resisting life's worst. Wilson is. But me? No, I'm absolutely not crap-proof. I pretend I am, I love to show to myself that no matter what happens to me, all I will ever need is to slide down to the floor of my bathroom, and pop some white pills of happiness. It gives me certainty, but it doesn't make me brave. On the contrary, I am a sap. Sometimes I just want to cry, but I was brought up by someone who believed crying was for sissies, so I now believe crying is for sissies. I don't think I'd never be able to. I cried once, but I was having surgery in my brain, and my best friend's girlfriend was dying because of me.

Speaking of which: I have one friend. One true friend, I mean. Because you might get mistaken with all the people who love me or admire me, or respect me. Whatever. These people look up at me. My patients look up at me from their illnesses and I can read their need for me to heal them, I can read it in their eyes. My patients don't care about anything else than me being the only one who can figure out what is eating away at them. Sometimes, I'm the only one at all who believes anything is. My team looks up at me as both their teacher and their boss. They might fear me, but I don't think they do. They fear the fact that they can't lie to me, and that I can say whatever the hell I want about their lives and choices, and most of the time I'm right. They look up at me because even though they're scared to face themselves because I make them, I also make them take steps, feel different. I make them matter.

Then, there's the people who look down at me. I was in court with a couple of them, and they were so self-satisfied with the mere possibility of having me in prison, that they kept looking down at me that way you'd just smash something in their heads. Just to lash out a bit and get their eyes off you. They found me disgusting because I didn't fit their image of how a doctor or a decent man should be. But in the end they were just feeding their need for order. Which is something that scares me, because it reminds me of my military childhood. Order is not a good thing, in my eyes: but I might be biased on that matter, so let's just move on. Among those who look down at me, there's people who do so because they pity me. They see me struggling to step off the bus and they must think it's so unfair that this handsome man with the leath has to be a cripple. They see me standing up to visit them in the clinic room and they have to keep themselves from asking me not to bother standing, that I could be uncomfortable. They see me curing their loved ones and they think it's something worth a tear that such a genius scientist and a live savior has to deal with this sad condition of not being able to walk. Another curious fact is that I'm not handsome at all, but the ladies stare a lot, and I can see they think I am: it comes packed with the handicap. Usually, it's worse - that is, gives them more pleasure - when it happens to someone good looking. And they look down at me.

Wilson is different. He doesn't look down at me, he doesn't look up at me. He looks at me and that's all. I look at him and that's all. We see each other. Wilson sewed my cane once, which speaks volumes about the fact that he doesn't look down at me. He doesn't look up at me either: he's seen me on the brink of despair too many times to be still convinced that I'm some sort of fallen angel. Wilson forgave me once: he forgave me something most people don't forgive... He forgave me for being the person I am, and for the consequences this brought into his life, included the death of his girlfriend. I know, I know it wasn't my fault. It's just fate, and fate sucks. But let's face it: I called for help because I was drunk as hell and Amber came to pick me up instead of Wilson. She was on that bus because of me. That the stupid garbage truck crashed into us, well, that is not directly my fault. But I'm not completely clean: she was there because of me. Yet, Wilson forgave me. We changed a lot since then. Not us, you know I don't believe people change (but if I keep writing this memoir I might start changing my mind). What changed is the way we relate to each other, the way we deal with our friendship: he's less preachy and I'm less dependent. He's become less manipulative and I've had a dose of humility. Wilson and I carry on, whatever happens. It's like... I can't "carry on whatever happens" if I don't swallow opioids in large quantities, while the entity which is "Wilson plus Me" can, and can do it very effectively. We just move on. So I guess this entity is what my life should be: learn to forgive, have fun, don't do drugs.  
>If Wilson ends up getting sick of me, it's probably time for a shotgun to the head. But it won't happen, because he's an idiot and loves to be friends with self-righteous drug addicts. So I won't be killing myself over us breaking up, in the end.<p>

–  
><em>I've waited all my life <em>  
><em>If not now, when will I?<em>  
>–<p>

He and Cuddy were my reasons to be. Then, she left. I never understood if she was in the ranks of those who look up at me, or the other way round. I certainly looked up at her: I loved her. I loved her a lot, and I didn't want to poison her. She loved me, I guess. Or she believed she did, while in fact she loved a persona she created for me. The healed version of me she couldn't have, that she loved. She looked up at me as the most incredible person she had ever known: I don't know her standards, but they must have been pretty messed up. I hated that she looked up at me. She should have seen me for what I was, and I had warned her that she should. But she never was a very pragmatic human being: she was the dearest soul and the most naive and irrational I've ever met, and that made me love her. I thought believing was enough, and it wasn't. Her faith kept me breathing so freely that I was about to give up my gift for settling down to a happy, easy life. But again, I'm not equipped for facing reality, and neither was she. We crumbled down in pieces over the possibility of being separated by something more powerful than us. When I was certain she would die before my helpless eyes, I couldn't take the idea of losing the faith she had put into me that I would be fine after all, and for the rest of my life: without that faith and the love she filled it with, I was just the same old failure. And I behaved like that.  
>Guess it's clear now what I meant when I said that I needed her. If she came back to me, I'd probably fall for it all over again. Which is one of the reasons for which I made sure she never wanted to be in the same square mile as me, again. The farther away, the better. I hate being deluded into thinking I can change. Even if it implies that I get to be loved.<p>

_We've been good _  
><em>Even a blast, but <em>  
><em>Don't you feel like<br>something's missing here?  
><em>–

All the rest is what I am when the lights go down on my whiteboard, when the latest patient walks out on his legs. If it's just another night, I ride my motorbike home and I get a little music from my piano, a sip of scotch. I even smile to myself, if it's not a bad day for the pain. I'm not lonely. I like to be left alone because I know there is at least one person in my life that needs me as much as I need him, and a bunch more that don't think I'm a dangerous pill-popping sociopath. My mother and my team need a special mention for this last point I made.

So, as I was saying earlier: it was about time something changed in my life. What changed? Nothing that you can see. Nothing palpaple. It's just that I might know something more about myself, something that was always there for me to figure out (because again, change is not something I'm completely sure I believe in)... It's just...  
>A <em>feeling<em>. I know I'll regret this the moment I utter the sentence, but let'say my demons are not demons after all: would I believe that? I don't know, but I feel like it's time for acceptance.

Not because it's easier, but because I believe in being true to oneself, an ability I try to teach, but in which I'm not very good myself. And my truth might just be accepting that there's both light and shadow in me, which is something that needs dealing with before I die in the process of fighting one or the other. Aren't we all like that, in the end?

Closing credits and black screen. Goodbye, Gregory House.

_–_

_I've waited all my life _  
><em>If not now, when will I? <em>  
><em>Stand up and face the bright light <em>  
><em>Don't hide your eyes <em>  
><em>It's time.<em>

* * *

><p>Song: If Not Now When - Incubus<p> 


End file.
